


The Young King of the Black Isles

by Quillori



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, PARRISH Maxfield - Works : The Young King of the Black Isles (artwork)
Genre: Don't Have to Know Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It could be said the Black Isles are fortunate in their rulers, though whether the kings themselves are fortunate is another question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Young King of the Black Isles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lferion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/gifts).



The fire blazes up in red and gold, and the whole room seems to shimmer with the heat. It's almost too hot to breathe, and the sweat is running into Armel's eyes, so that he can hardly see. It would be so easy to give up, to order the fire banked and the windows opened to the cool sea breezes: it's only an exercise, after all, and he could demonstrate he's mastered the form of it in considerably more comfort. 

It wouldn't be enough, though, just showing off he understood the principle with something little better than parlour magic: if he's going to do it, he will do it properly. He can almost feel the right place, the necessary fulcrum. Dinesh's words ring in his ears: everything in balance, everything in nature must keep accord with its opposite. The trick is in the nature of the accord. And there it is: the silver bowl in his hands begins to cool, to grow cold, the water in it freezing suddenly as it falls into a new and opposite pattern: as cold as the room is hot, ice to match the fire. 

He can't keep it up for long – he has neither the strength nor the experience – but having done it once, it will be that much easier a second time, and a third, the new pattern engraving itself in his mind. Dinesh says that too is balance: as you change the world, you change yourself. Armel has heard the same sentiment expressed in other ways – it is popularly said magicians pay for their power from their own souls, which is not entirely inaccurate, although the corollary that the most powerful magicians cannot be trusted for they have no soul left is obviously untrue. Dinesh is one of the kindest men Armel has ever known.

The ice is already beginning to melt again, but it was really there, hard and solid and cold. Dinesh looks at it approvingly: he does not need to say he's impressed. Fire is his element, the area in which he is most skilled, but it does not come at all easily to Armel. Dinesh was a blacksmith as well as a mage, before, and it still shows: the firelight gleams on his muscles, and he lifts the huge bolts from the shutters as though they were nothing (it takes two men, normally, to open them – the place was built as a fortress, and one day may need to be one again). The low afternoon sun pours in, glinting on the bronze at Dinesh's wrists and neck, and making the melting ice glitter. Ice makes sense to Armel: its strength; the way it will hide itself in water, mostly submerged; its frozen perfection; the angle you must hit it to make it shatter. Fire is a different thing, protean and hungry, springing up from nothing and consuming everything in its path. Still, he held them in balance for a moment, found a good enough understanding of fire somewhere within himself to see where it could meet with ice and exchange places. 

He is exhausted with the effort, but he has been brought up never to show weakness, so he stands up easily, confidently, as though his legs didn't feel like they would give way under him, and walks to the opened window. Below the tower, the sea foams white against the rocks, and the seagulls wheel white against a blue sky, their familiar screams sharp against the constant rumble of the breaking waves. And if he leans a little against the window frame, it cannot really matter: there is no one here to see, except Dinesh, who must surely understand.

§

“One day you'll overturn the boat, doing that.” Kansu says it lightly though, an old joke. He's long since accepted Armel is as surefooted as any true fisherman, and no more likely to tip the boat than Kansu himself. It's a good day, the sun warm and the air still; the sky is blue clear to the horizon. There will be no storm today to hurl the little boats against the hard cliffs, no sudden squall to make the peaceful sea suddenly treacherous. And Armel is here with him, to help draw in the heavy catch. (It will be a heavy catch, Kansu is sure, for Armel has the knack of it, and can always say, today the fish will be _here_ , and be right. Which is probably not surprising, given who he is, and what he can do, but Kansu prefers not to think of that, to think of him just as a friend, who is good with boats, and could have made a good fisherman, had he been born to a different family.)

It is pleasant to have someone to talk to – the sea can be a lonely place, and while Kansu would not have chosen another life even had it been on offer, there are times when he is alone too long and his mind starts to stray in uncomfortable directions, to the sting of salt in his mouth and his eyes, and fear plucking at his limbs: once, when he was a little child, he fell from his father's boat in bad weather – not really bad, not a true storm, but bad enough for a child – and he can still remember what it felt like to almost drown, how he couldn't swim hard enough to stay afloat, how every desperate breath was choked off by another mouthful of salt water. It is not, he thinks, a good way to die, although of course he must risk it if he is to do his job, and every year some men must die, through ill luck or carelessness, or to appease the gods of storm and sea, who feed upon men as men do upon fish. (Balance. There is always balance in all things. He has known this all his life.)

But those are thoughts for another time. Now he has a companion, and the weather is good, and the little boat skims over the waves like a bird. He and Armel chat of this and that, old friends who can talk or be silent as the mood takes them. There is a new baker: he used to be apprenticed to the baker on the main street, and was a remarkably good looking young man who married well – he opened his own bakery with the dowry, and everyone agrees he shows real promise. Perhaps after all his wife was not taken only by his dark eyes (dark as the depth of the sea, or a night without stars, Armel says – he has a way with words), but with his talent and ambition also. 

The merchants who trade in silk (shot peacock like with greens and blue, or figured with gold thread) tell of unrest far to the North, of skirmishes and harbour towns repairing their old defences, but that is all a long way away: perhaps it will disrupt the trade in silk, and distress the fine court ladies, but it means little to Kansu – war has not touched the island kingdom since his grandfather was a little boy, and the old king's father drove out the invaders. Since then the islands have been secure, have indeed expanded their borders, creating a safe buffer of client kingdoms who stand between them and any danger. Only those who choose to be soldiers by profession need fight; for everyone else, war is a thing of stories and songs, not real like the harvest, or the daily catch, or the bread baked fresh in the morning.

Closer to home, Kansu is saving to buy Chanry a pretty fillet to bind her hair: they married only a few months ago, and sometimes he cannot quite believe she really is his wife, for she is a girl in a thousand. Her fingers are so quick and nimble she mends nets with the skill of a woman twice her age, and their little one room house is as clean and spotless as a palace. She has a smile, too, like the moon coming out of the clouds, and she sings to herself as she works. Perhaps he will have saved enough to buy her something really nice by the time their first child is born. (He feels a little sorry for Armel, though he knows it would be unkind to say so, just as Armel knows it would be unkind to offer to buy the fillet for him. They've known each other for years now, and can keep their friendship on an even footing with the same skill they can stand casually on a tossing boat. Still, he is sad to think of Armel and his foreign bride-to-be: Armel speaks well of her, always, praising her intelligence, her skill, her dignity and beauty, but his face does not light up when he speaks of her, as Chanry's does when she sees Kansu, and Kansu suspects his does when he thinks of her. It is a shame to go through life without a true helpmeet, someone with whom to share not only your burdens but your joys too, for Kansu is happy by nature, and has found to his delight that his happiness is doubled when he shares it with another. He does not think Armel is happy often enough: perhaps he is strong enough to bear his burdens unaided, but it would have been good for him to have someone who made him smile.)

Still, Armel is very nearly smiling now, lying back in the boat and watching the way the seabirds dance with the sea, and the pattern the tide makes. “There,” he says, “right there is where you'll find the fish.” And of course he's right, better at finding them than Kansu, who was born and bred to it, although that's another thing he avoids asking: how Armel knows, what it feels like to be able to see how the world fits together, its hidden patterns. It seems to Kansu it must be a very beautiful thing to see, but he wants Armel to smile and be content, and he still remembers Armel's face, the way he'd said some types of beauty are too terrible to know, and gone quiet and overly courteous, withdrawing into himself the way he always did when he was hurt. Better not to talk about it, better to talk about everything and nothing instead, and share lunch, and put Armel to work: simple, physical labour that left a man tired but satisfied with what he'd achieved. Perhaps he'll take him home with him tonight, have Chanry cook him a fish over the fire. It isn't good for him to spend so much time studying, and so little living.

§

Jordi looks at the parchment sheet and sighs. Little numbers march across it in columns. In truth, they make his head spin. He is a simple farmer at heart, happy with the straightforward mysteries of the countryside: soil and seeds and honest sunlight. But it isn't enough to clear and till the land, to plant in the proper season and harvest what you'd sown. Perhaps if you had only a small farm, enough to feed your family and nothing more, but his father had grown prosperous, buying up field after field and tending it well until they were rich, with a house in town and land that must be managed as well as farmed. What must be bought when, and at what cost; how many men were needed and what they must be paid; how much could be stored where, and at what market it would bring the best price … there was too much to hold in your head at once, and it made sense to learn how to keep proper accounts. It wasn't much of a way to spend your afternoons, however.

His father had bought a skilled slave to teach him, and he was a good teacher, patient and clear and firm, but that didn't make writing and arithmetic easy to learn. Jordi envied the nobles who were taught such things as children, when it came more readily, and didn't have to struggle as adults to comprehend confusing, nonsensical squiggles. The young prince, say: no doubt he could read and write without effort. He wouldn't have to spend his days stuck inside a gloomy schoolroom, when the sun was shining outside, and there was proper work to be done. Well, not work for the prince, obviously, who probably went to parties, or composed songs, or whatever it was princes did, but work Jordi could have been doing, which would have been better and more satisfying than adding one number endlessly to the next. 

Jordi is a good son, however, and a sensible young man, who can see the way of the future, and knows his duty to his family. His father paid good money to ensure Jordi could keep his own accounts, and Jordi isn't going to let it go to waste.

§

Armel studies the board carefully. Minali doesn't have a hope of winning, but she is a quick student, and in less than a year she's reached the point she can easily beat an average player, which is remarkable progress. It doesn't help her against Armel, who has been playing all his life, but he enjoys their matches all the same: she plays differently from everyone else, her mind working in unfamiliar ways, seeing new patterns, working out new strategies.

The board they are using is beautifully fashioned, the pieces carved from precious stones, but it is the same game played throughout the islands, whether the pieces are made by the finest jeweller, or chips of gaudy enamel, or broken fragments of shell: red pieces for fire, blue pieces for water, yellow pieces for light, all in equal number, and finally the white pieces (pearls, or china, or bone), representing unity, the forces of the natural world blending together in perfect alignment. The board itself is always black, representing the islands.

If he looks at it in the right way, both relaxed and attentive at the same time, he can see it with a sort of double vision, both a game and a symbol of the world, the same forces running through it that run through the kingdom. And that too is practice, a necessary exercise in holding on to that vision, when it would be easier to let it go and see only what is in front of his eyes. He has been practising for years, now, and can hold onto it for a long time.

He prefers, however, to play against Minali straight, seeing it only as a game. A game at which he is very skilled, certainly, but a game with no other dimensions, no echoes beyond itself. A game she could, in theory, win. In the ordinary way of things it would be an indulgence, devoting so much time to playing merely for the sake of play, but he has obligations to Minali as well, who is after all a stranger in an unfamiliar land, and has some claim on him, so the time is not exactly wasted. And it is easy to forget what a pleasure it is to do something solely for its own sake, because it is enjoyable and nothing more. Which is, perhaps, something he should try not to forget.

Minali is studying the board too, frowning slightly, her eyes fierce. She throws herself into everything she does, forcing herself to succeed. Armel wonders what it must be like for her here, making a new life among those who have been her enemies for so long. Enemies no longer, of course, and she herself is here as token of that, but even so... 

Hopefully she will come to love the islands in time, to feel they are her home also, however different from the harsh deserts of her own land. Surely that was possible? But what a land hers must be: he knows in truth it has cities, and farms, and roads, much like any other country, but in his mind he sees it as a land of flames and fire, of eternal desert and vicious sandstorm, heat and flame, burning like a blacksmith's forge. (It is Dinesh's land also, which was why he thinks of it as a land of fire. He wonders what style of player Dinesh would be, if he plays by now like an islander, or with the same foreign slant as Minali. Better than Minali, though: she is quick and clever, but Dinesh must have had years more practice, and his natural talent as a mage. Perhaps playing him, it might be possible to see the game both ways, and still play for pleasure and not for practice. But then, Dinesh has never offered to play, and it is hardly something Armel could order him to do.)

Minali's nails are dyed with henna, a foreign fashion, and they click decisively against the board as she moves a ruby piece.

§

There is a ceremony, of course. Everything is hung with red and white, yellow and blue, and the court functionaries go about dressed in black: fire, and water, and sunlight, and the rich, dark soil of the land itself. The rites are said for the old king; the young king is crowned; life goes on. Already there is the wedding to prepare, and a bustle of activity about the palace.

The king sits on the throne, and fulfils his function, as a king should. There is much that must be kept in balance, and existing balances that must be transmuted, fire to ice and back again. The right way of looking, attentive and relaxed, and he sees the shadows of the future, feels the balance points where fate can be made to change, where the future of his country can be made secure.

The wedding. Minali. The queen will dream of home. How could she not? Her loyalty burns as fierce as flame, and had it met an answering flame, she might have come to love him, been loyal both to him and to his country, but failing that, she will be loyal to her memories, to her own countrymen, to anyone she meets in whom she sees the same fire. She burns. But then, fire has its uses.

The gong sounds, signalling the time of prayer for the safety of those at sea, for the hymn in praise and gratitude to the ocean gods. The phrases are rote, but their familiar cadence has echoes, here on the throne, a murmured truth inexorable as the tide: the fishing fleet goes out, and the catch is brought in, again and again and again. But the sea is as hungry in its way as fire, and will take its sacrifice one way or another. Somewhere a little boat skims the waves like a bird, and the birds wheel in the air, weaving a storm. It is after all necessary for men to sometimes drown, paying the price for the calm harbour, the abundant fish. And there would be no justice if one man should live and another die in his place, merely for the sake of friendship; any woman may be widowed as well as another, any child orphaned. It is the way of things. And if it were not the way of things, if one life were more valuable than the next, it would be tyranny indeed.

The chanted prayer comes to an end. Soon it will be time to hold audience. Dinesh comes in on silent feet, taking his place to one side, where he may watch over his charge, as solicitous now of the king as he was of the prince, his pupil. There is no real daylight in the throne room, only the light of lamps, but even the lamplight gleams and glints on the gyves on Dinesh's wrists, the collar at his neck. They are bronze, and beautifully worked, chased with intricate designs, but they are still manacles, however stylized, and Dinesh is still a slave, however favoured, however comfortable his position, however much he may be Armel's friend and teacher.

He will, or course, serve the queen as he does the king, constantly in her presence. Armel can see already how that will go, can feel the heat of it. Such a flame could be used for almost anything, if you have the trick of it, and he is the king, and has a duty to his people. He has, indeed, nothing but his duty, because that is the price of power.


End file.
